Thirty-two years ago in Engel v. Vitale the Supreme Court
ruled that state-sponsored school prayer violated the Establishment
Clause. Justice Hugo Black, author of the majority opinion in Engel,
reminded his readers that the Establishment Clause rests upon the
belief that "a union of government and religion tends to destroy
government and degrade religion." Since 1962, there have been numerous
attempts, including attempts at formally amending the Constitution, to
bring state-sponsored school prayer back into the classroom.

The current wave of attempts, which began in the mid-1980s, is the
"moment of silence" ploy. In the 1985 Wallace v. Jaffree
decision, the Court struck down an Alabama state statute, which
authorized a moment of silence to be used for "meditation or voluntary
prayer" in the public schools. The Court applied the Lemon v.
Kurtzman (1971) standard of review (known as the Lemon Test) to
the Alabama moment of silence law. The Lemon standard,
which is frequently employed by the Court to review Establishment
Clause cases, requires that if the challenged practice is to be found
constitutional it must have: (1) a legitimate secular purpose; (2) the
principle or primary effect of not advancing or inhibiting religion;
and (3) not fostering excessive governmental entanglement with
religion. In applying the secular purpose test, Justice Stevens argued
that it was appropriate to ask whether the governmental purpose was to
endorse or disapprove of religion. The legislative history showed that
the bill's sponsor stated the law was "an effort to return voluntary
school prayer" to the public schools of Alabama, and therefore was
violative of the Establishment Clause.

Two years later the Court had been expected to rule on a New Jersey
law, which required that students in public schools be allowed a
moment of silence for "quiet and private contemplation or
introspection," however, the case was dismissed for lack of
jurisdiction.

Among the many states that have adopted "moment of silence" laws are
Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Tennessee,
Virginia, and South Carolina. Florida, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania are
considering similar laws.

This past August, in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, a social studies
teacher at South Gwinnett High, Brian Bown, was fired by the school
board for lecturing, as an act of protest, throughout the newly
enacted moment of silence. Bown told the Associated Press: "I either
violate my conscience and beliefs and follow a law that is blatantly
unconstitutional, or I'm fired." Bown stated that the law violated his
conscience because the law is intended as a first step to get
state-sponsored prayer into the schools. Bown intends to take his case
to federal court.

South Carolina's recently enacted moment of silence law was
spearheaded by Rep. Becky Meacham of (R-York). In an interview in the
Columbia State she admitted that her real goal was school
prayer legislation, but a moment of silence was the best she could do
— for now.

These back-door attempts to promote state-sponsored prayer in our
public schools provide all the more reason to remind those
pro-state-sponsored prayer in public school advocates of Justice Hugo
Black's admonition: that "a union of government and religion tends to
destroy government and degrade religion."